One week ago, I noted that of the seven states with Senate elections currently rated as toss-ups by RealClearPolitics, five of them had Republican candidates polling worse than Kari Lake, the proven loser in Arizona.
Now that more polls have cycled through the RCP averages, that is no longer true. But it’s mostly not because other Senate candidates are polling better.
Lake’s deficit behind Democrat Ruben Gallego increased from 3.4 points one week ago to 6.7 points today.
Same as last week, the only GOP Senate candidate in a toss-up state who is currently leading in the polls is Tim Sheehy in Montana. No new polls were included in the RCP average since last week, and he leads incumbent Democrat Jon Tester by 4.4 points.
The only GOP candidate who has gained ground in the past seven days is Mike Rogers in Michigan. A week ago, he trailed Democrat Elissa Slotkin by 5.4 points; he is now trailing by 4.1 points.
Everyone else is doing the same or worse:
- In Ohio, Republican Bernie Moreno trails incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown by five points, the same as a week ago.
- In Wisconsin, Republican Eric Hovde trails incumbent Democrat Tammy Baldwin by 6.7 points, up from 6.1 points a week ago.
- In Pennsylvania, Republican David McCormick trails incumbent Democrat Bob Casey by 7.6 points, up from 6.8 points a week ago.
- In Nevada, Republican Sam Brown trails incumbent Democrat Jackie Rosen by 9.4 points, up from four points a week ago.
The Senate map this year should be a gift to Republicans, but as of now, it looks like they will only flip West Virginia and Montana, which, if everything else holds, would result in a bare majority of 51.
A series of failures this year, compounded with the disappointments of 2022, puts the GOP way behind where it could be in the Senate. In Nevada in 2022, Republican Adam Laxalt lost by only about 8,000 votes. The GOP nominated terrible candidates in the competitive states of Arizona (Blake Masters), Georgia (Herschel Walker), and Pennsylvania (Dr. Oz), all of whom lost.
Had the coin flip in Nevada gone the other way and had the GOP nominated candidates who could actually win the general elections in Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, Republicans would control the Senate right now with 53 seats. With seven toss-ups this year, that would put them within striking distance of a filibuster-beating 60 seats.
That’s obviously wishful thinking, and it would have been very impressive to win so many competitive elections. But it’s also very impressive, in the other direction, to lose so many, as Republicans have done and appear set to continue doing.
After the 2020 elections, Republicans controlled 50 Senate seats. To emerge from the first midterm election for an unpopular opposite-party president and a presidential year with an extremely favorable map with a net gain of only one seat would be dismal.